Although THE CHARITY WEBSITE says – read more – you really won’t want to because the website is full of obfuscation and misinformation.
Despite assurances from the charity new private nursing home to be operated by HC-One that a planning application has been imminent for two years – we ain’t seen nothin yet! Though the WW has heard the new plans will go on display later this month, Presumably with the news that…
SURPRISE, SURPRISE! ITS PARTNER HC-ONE HAS BEEN PUT UP FOR SALE BEFORE THE INK IS DRY ON THE SHODDY DEAL! A deal with fills the coffers of Surrey County Council, through the sale of its nursing home site at Longfields in Cranleigh, Assists with Guildford & Waverley CCG’s bed blocking problems for its 37 GP practices in yes, you guessed – GUILDFORD AND WAVERLEY – by including 10 NHS beds.
So now Cranleigh and the surrounding villages are asking – Please Sir – can we have our money back – over £1m quid of it, before it drops into Mr Chai Patel’s trousers with the other £1billion?
No wonder Dr Chai Patel looks so smug. He must think he has struck gold – Cranleigh and the surrounding village’s gold from the public’s pockets. Cranleigh Parish Council’s gold – a piece of land for which it didn’t even receive twenty pieces of silver. Just a peppercorn pound and a bit of agricultural land – now a playing field – adjacent to which the charity now wants to put in a pay and display car park!
SO IF THAT’S THE CASE … WHY IS IT SELLING OFF CARE HOMES IN OTHER PARTS OF THE COUNTRY?
Will the new Cranleigh Care Home be sold off before it is even built?
Have the residents of Cranleigh and the surrounding villages been duped? Has the parish council been duped? And will this, combined with all the other development going on, bring Cranleigh’s traffic to a halt?
One Alfold resident has already written to the Waverley Web suggesting it should all go to DUNSFOLD. Does he mean the Dunsfold that is today fighting a Judicial Review in the High Court?
The Cranleigh Village Nursing Home Trust – previously known as the Cranleigh Village Hospital Trust – has been told by health officials it can no longer refer to its £38m development, with a private provider, as A ‘HOSPITAL’.
Poised to submit plans to build a 60-bed private nursing home for HC-ONE on land in Knowle Lane – which was once owned by the people of Cranleigh and for which it paid, £1! Yes, you did read that right, they paid the princely sum of ONE POUND for land that was valued by the District Valuer at £175,000!!!
Anger is now mounting amongst local residents who raised funds for a project that has strayed so far from its original dream, it has become something of a local nightmare! Not only for CVNT but for Cranleigh Parish Council, Cranleigh residents and now possibly, even Waverley Borough Council?
Q: Why?
A: Because Waverley Planners could be faced with determining a planning application for a scheme that was originally intended as a replacement for Cranleigh Village Hospital but which has now morphed into:
• A Private nursing home – with beds priced at the market rate! • 10 social care beds for Surrey County Council, which allows The County Council to flog off the Longfield Nursing Home site and trouser the cash! Longfield was a council run home once housing over 50 elderly residents and a specialist Dementia unit. • 10 community NHS beds – but those beds won’t be for the exclusive use of Cranleigh residents. Oh no! They will be available to anyone within the Guildford & Waverley CCG Area’s 37 GP practices!
And, which could now affect its aim to build a new – much bigger Leisure Centre.
Says the Cranleigh Village Society?.
• Over £1m raised for a replacement Village Hospital came from men, women, children, clubs, and local businesses in Cranleigh and the surrounding villages; it was never intended for the use of patients of 37 practices which make up the entire G & W CCG!
The area shaded in blue covers the Guildford & Waverley CCG area
• In addition, the CVNT, intend to build a block of 26 apartments, adjacent to the three-storey building behind Wiskar Drive and M&S Foods – also on land once owned by the parish and designated by Waverley as an area of Strategic Visual Importance. This now includes an access over the Snoxhall Playing Fields directly onto the already beleaguered Knowle Lane – for which it paid the Parish Council – yes, you guessed it: Zilch!! Allegedly these apartments are ear-marked for “key workers”. But whose key workers? The WW hears, if that isn’t enough, CVNT wants an access over the Downslink – the very same route which Waverley intends to keep sacrosanct should the railway return to Cranleigh.All aboard the Cranleigh express?
Now here’s the rub.
Knowle Lane has a narrow access onto Cranleigh High Street. Traffic backs up there constantly because Kerbside Garage, living up to its name, has a consistent flow of customers who all park on the kerbside, thus reducing the narrow two-lane road to an even narrower one-lane!
Incredibly, juggernauts delivering to both M&S and Sainsbury’s go in either side of the lane, creating yet more, chaos. Oh, and and the icing on the cake is the lane regularly floods! You couldn’t make it up, really you couldn’t!
Almost directly opposite the proposed access to the new nursing home is the recently created entrance into the new Berkeley Homes housing estate – 450 homes consented, 55 of which are accessed off Knowle Lane, almost directly opposite the entrance to M&S’s carpark, Wiskar Drive, Lynn Murray & Associates solicitors and several High Street shops rear entrances.
According to our followers over there in the East, Cranleigh’s old Village Hospital has been smartened up by the League of Friends for ambulatory patients – many thousands of them in the future accessing the services of X-Ray, consultant-led clinics and a proposed MRI scanner. Will these patients come from the CCG area?
And now, the cherry on the cake, Waverley BC has pledged to spend £12m on a new leisure centre to serve Cranleigh New Town! And all of this is the same, small congested area between Village Way and the lane between Bet Fred and Boots!
And, just to add a little spice to the mix, the Devious Dutch Developer behind The Knowle Park Initiative, Nicholas Vrijjland – formerly known as the Lettuce King – wants to build a car park in Knowle Lane adjacent to the Bruce McKenzie field,which he swapped with the parish but which he has nicely wrapped up and tied with a bow, into a Ransome strip!
In addition to clogging up Cranleigh High Street the Devious Dutch Developer is currently clogging up Alfold Road in Elmbridge, where he’s flogged off his former lettuce nursery to A1Dominion – a director of which just happens to be – yes, you guessed it – a director of CVNT, one Andy Leafy. Leafy who is preparing to build 265 homes on the old lettuce nursery, and 26 on the nursing home site, which he and the Devious Dutch Developer claim is all about improving the lives of Cranleigh folk! We think they mean improving the lives of themselves whilst lining their pockets at the expense of Cranleigh folk!
Now the locals are screaming – ‘Anyone want to buy my home in the village that Waverley Planners dubbed “Poor Old Cranleigh?’
Is this Charity fulfilling the expectations of the people of Cranleigh and the surrounding villages? Is it fulfilling its charitable objects? And, has Cranleigh Parish Council achieved Best Value for its residents? Has it acted responsibly?
There are many unanswered questions? Perhaps these will be answered over the coming weeks as the Charity lodges its planning application and holds a public consultation exercise?
When Cranleigh councillors joined forces with a gang of local developers to provide the new town’s high street with more footfall, we doubt they ever envisaged that residents might be forced to shop elsewhere.
Has peddled off!HSBC Gone! But may have been replaced by another retailer – perhaps an optician?
With HGV’s thundering through its High Street, and approach roads and residential roads witnessing volumes of traffic previously unheard of, the thud of shops doors closing for the last time is deafening. It is now becoming all too common as struggling retailers give up the fight to stay in business. They include:
National Westminster Bank and its ATM machine – GONE!
Barclays Bank – GOING
HSBC Gone
Santander – GONE!
Customers – GONE to Horsham or Godalming?
Ruby & Kind – GONE.
Magdalena’s Tea Rooms – GONE!
Raffles Bakery – GONE!
Bones Interiors – GONE!
Ask Italian Restaurant – GONE!
137 Restaurant – GONE!
Cranleigh Cycle Shop – GONE!
Timothy Pearson Hairdressers – Going…Going… Gone?
The Lemon Tree – GOING!
Carolyn Lodge Travel – GOING soon!
Barclays Bank – GOING in October!
Even the charity shops are closing! Cranleigh Nursing Home shop. Gone!
Too many small businesses to mention on the Smithbrook Kilns Industrial Estate – where now dozens of small shop units have or are being converted, into – yes you guessed flats.
And The Smithbrook Forge Barns.
Wayahead – Going to another site off the High Street?
Plus numerous vacant offices in the High Street, Rowland Road, Collins Court and elsewhere all seeking planning permission for residential use.
Ran out of space – suffice to say more going!
Perhaps all those Waverley borough councillors who permitted over 1,700 new homes to be built there – were right when they used the soliloquy – “Poor Old Cranleigh!”
Here’s what just a few residents are saying- about the Cranleigh New Town building site! Others have contacted the WW saying, although they want to remain loyal, they are shopping in nearby Horsham when they go to the BANK!
It’s no secret that Conservative Waverley Borough Councillors the Cranleigh’s Stennett duo was the first to leap onto the developers’ bandwagon trousering a few bob for their contribution toward helping to solve the borough’s housing problems – and in the green belt too!
Despite planning officers strongly recommending refusal – Councillors Stennett’s colleagues leapt at the opportunity to breach the green belt in Guildford Road, Cranleigh and grant consent.
One agreed – more to go?
Then along comes former Conservative Surrey Councillor Alan Young snaffling up a property in Mapledrakes Road, Ewhurst, which he’s presently sitting on, keeping nicely warm and hoping to hatch another shedload of housing soon now that the trees have been felled? Oops did we forget, the property was purchased from a Ewhurst parish councillor, who threatened to sue the Waverley Web, after “a friend” informed us that it had been owned by the PC’s late father not him personally !!
More to come?
Thankfully Cllr Young was found out in more ways than one by the Conservative Association, and the Tories dumped him for Andrew Povey. (Well! the less said about him the better.) Both are currently a complete embarrassment to Ewhurst/Cranleigh and the latter is now chairman of the Cranleigh Conservative Association.
Now the former Guildford Cons Treasurer, John Beckwith-Smith Councillor Young’s business partner, has pitched in with his scheme to build 53 homes at Windacres Farm, in Cox Green, which is on the Surrey/ Sussex border but within the Waverley borough. On the West side of Cox Green Planning Application: WA/2018/1109
As you will see Surrey County Council is perfectly happy to trouser £160,206 for early years schooling and £35,672 for Primary Schooling – ALL IN “POOR OLD CRANLEIGH!”
However, it is slightly more circumspect about Secondary Education saying – there is plenty of Capacity at Glebelands.
So more coming soon?
Just across the other side of Cox Green another Conservative Councillor – one Horsham Councillor John Bailey or (JCB) as he is known locallywants to build a further 57 on his farmland.
Ewhurst PC meeting has discussed the scheme and agreed to object, but its Waverley councillor (Con) Val Henryhas already pinned her colours to JBC’s coat-tails saying she will support the application! No surprise there then!!
A difficult and potentially very unfair situation has now arisen in nearby Rudgwick. In the normal course of events, as Horsham District Council is the authority that determines planning applications you would expect that (JCB) the Cllr for Rudgwick Ward would be actively engaged in lobbying to help his constituents – 57 letters of objection have already been racked up but sadly not possible as the applicant is its very own Horsham (JCB) district councillor!!
Instead it would appear although Conservative Cllr John Baileyclaims quite correctly in his planning application for houses at Cox Green that his land there has not been farmed, except for haymaking (and the steam show), that he has begun ploughing the land with a view to becoming the smallest arable farmer in England and to keep a few cattle for the first time in memory (years ago the Bailey business was local milk delivery). Might this have something to do with justifying his large barn?
So, in other words, Rudgwick & Cox Green have effectively, no representation on HDC or WBC to speak on their behalf.
And … there could be more homes in just one of the two developments than there are now in the whole of Cox Green (both in Sussex and Surrey).
Even if you have never watched a clip from a Waverley Council Webcast – this link below is a MUST DO!
If you watch one Scrutiny Committee this year – Cllr Holder’s comments on the Economic Strategy certainly are an eye-opener!
• He’s meeting with Jeremy Hunt and the MD of the railways to knock the train capacities into shape. • He’s also creating a new railway line between Cranleigh & Guildford • He’s talking to the Chinese Cultural attache to encourage Chinese tourism, and he’s managed to find a local Mandarin speaker (Jeremy Hunt’s wife no less!) to translate his barmy ideas. • He’s reprinting the pamphlet ‘Lutyens in Waverley’ in Mandarin to snare those Chinese tourists and to encourage them to visit Charterhouse School and our high streets to spend their Yuan.
The Councillor without portfolio for Hambledon & Witley and formerly for Dunsfold certainly loves a meeting with the great and good to show off his talents. But what exactly has he ever actually done, other than opposing development on the largest brownfield site in the borough and support development in the countryside?!
PS Apparently there a great deal of mutter in the Conservative gutter about the identity of the Waverley Web.
